ELENA WRITES - II

This is a map that shows the radiation hotspots resulting from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, the size of a European state. There is no information about Belorussian, nothing known about the Russian part of Chernobyl. These areas are closed to visitors.

As for levels which returned to acceptable standards, levels had fallen because in 1986 radiation was on the surface, in summer 1989, 3 years after the accident, 90% of radiation was in the top 2cms of soil, now it penetrates the soil to 20 cms, which makes further decontaminating processes impossible. Now the soil is breathing with radiation from deep inside and sometimes the following element in the decay cycle is no less safe than previously, like in the case of Americium.

Americium.

Some of the villages are heavily poisoned. The radiation here is even higher than it is near the reactor site.

If we take a Geiger counter reading on the road, then one on the grass and compare the two readings, the grass is 8.5 times more than the asphalt, because radiation becomes concentrated in living organisms. The source of this radiation is Americium.
Initially, things were not too bad here. This area was poisoned with Plutonium-241 and a strange quirk of this element is that it is not very radioactive at first. It waits quietly for 14.4 years and then decays into components that include Americium-241 which produces powerful gamma rays, real cannon balls compared to the "bird-shot" particle radiation of the original Plutonium.

Movies showing today and movies coming soon were listed on the chalkboard at the club. The next coming attraction will be in four centuries time.

There will be no more lessons in this school classroom, either. The only lesson taught here now is that the physical half-life of Americium-241, the daughter of Plutonium-241 is more then 400 years.

Our descendants in the distant future will still be living with the consequences of this decay cycle, when our bones are dust.

The UN report sounds like the people are about to begin to populate those parts of the land where, according to UN, radiation levels have mostly returned to acceptable levels. Let me assure you, nothing of this kind is really happening. Each year that I travel I see more and more desolated villages and towns. The whole area is dying away. One of the reasons why people do not want to settle in areas close to Chernobyl is because the hastily constructed sarcophagus is in danger of collapse.

The decaying sarcophagus, referred to lightly as "The Elephant's Foot" by officials.

The present state of Chernobyl's Reactor.

Almost 20 years have passed since the accident and they have not even started to build us a decent sarcophagus. How come that the richest industry can not find money to build a new sarcophagus? They have enough means to build new reactors, to bribe news media and politicians all around the world, they are rich enough for keeping an official death toll so low for so many years, but they have no means, neither political nor economic to protect the people of Europe from nuclear meltdown.

Further, the UN report states:

"Benefits offered to 'victims' were expanded to 7 million people now eligible for pensions, special allowances and health benefits. These need to be scaled down to target only high-risk groups, though it would be unpopular." it said.

Pensions are not really worth a mention, we all know how "generous" are post soviet officials with pensions, special allowances and health benefits... these benefits are hardly worth a trolley ticket to go and pick them up.

Victims of Chernobyl would do much better if they had received money that governments spend on organizing all those fake seminars and forums.

Any way, I just wanted everyone to know where we stand with the truth about Chernie on eve of its 20th anniversary.

Chernobyl is not just a piece of our past. What government officials are hiding may be the future of our planet, because some day, we'll have to pay for all the lies, hypocrisy and greed of our system.

September, 2005

The Deafening Silence

I grew up in the Soviet Union and even when I was very young, I clearly remember the inescapable oppression of a totalitarian society. It is like owning a finely tuned piano, and trying to play with an orchestra that is deliberately out of tune because the state has determined that there are just too many notes in the musical scale, so some of them are outlawed.

Five years after the accident, the economy of the Soviet Union collapsed. This was a good thing, it seemed for a moment that world harmony might be on the horizon, but that hope now spins out of sight and everything around us is again going out of tune as wars and atomic madness reverberate in overtones of discord and the ticking metronome of our inevitable ruin grows louder each day.

That makes it more important than ever that we immerse ourselves in the solemn task of calmly tuning our souls to perfect pitch and straining to hear the whispers of harmony from others like us - arching over the wall of noise, before we are all surrounded by nothing but the deafening silence of a last vanished opportunity.

December, 2005

Chernobyl suicides

In the first few years after the Chernobyl disaster, a very high rate of suicide was reported. The thought of suicide comes creeping when terrors of life come to outweigh the terrors of death. Who could doubt that Chernobyl has provided all mankind with mega-terrors lurking up a blind alley?

Now, the official blame has been laid on those officials who took their own lives, such as Valery Legasov or the first secretary of the Communist party in Ukraine, Sherbitsky. I really believe those poor souls who committed suicide following Chernobyl were not complete bastards. Why? Because true bastards are known to have homicidal - not suicidal - tendencies.